It seems as if, to the extent the administration still retains cajones, they’re put to a single (and laudable) service: we will not arbitrarily withdraw from Iraq. As to everything else, I think Ann Coulter’s latest screed is correct:

Democrats have the breathtaking audacity to claim that Bush’s replacing his own political appointees is “politicizing prosecutions.”

They say this as Sandy Berger walks free after stealing and destroying top-secret national security documents – but Lewis “Scooter” Libby faces decades in prison for not outing a covert agent. (Let’s hope he’s learned his lesson!)

They say this as Rep. William “The Refrigerator” Jefferson sits on the Homeland Security Committee while waiting for the $100,000 found in his freezer to thaw – but Tom DeLay remains under an indictment by some hick prosecutor in Texas for an alleged accounting violation.

They say this as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid draws interest on the sale of a property he sold in a complicated land swindle – but American hero Randy “Duke” Cunningham rots in prison.

They say this while Sen. Chuck Schumer pays no price whatsoever for his Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee having illegally obtained a copy of Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele’s credit report, for which one employee, Lauren Weiner, pleaded guilty, but served no prison time.

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Democrats have created a world in which a DNC card is a “get out of jail free” card, and “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” means “no doubt the defendant is Republican.” (If Democrats keep this up, they’ll have to rethink their push to give inmates the right to vote.)

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Bush should say: “We did it, it was political, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Then he should start holding hearings on Congress’ obstruction of the war effort. Members of Congress should be asked to come before the administration’s hearings and testify under oath about their commitment to victory. If they are not traitors, what do they have to hide? Surely they will be willing to state under oath that they are not undermining the war effort for partisan political gain.

The hearings could be televised in prime time: “Traitor or No Traitor?”

It’s no surprise to me that Iran is reneging on its promise to release the single woman amongst the captured British sailors. That was never more than a feint, intended to buy time while Iran keeps the pressure on a paralyzed Britain. What irks me is something different, and petty, since I haven’t walked a mile or a minute in Faye Turney’s shoes: it’s that headscarf she’s shown wearing in the illegal-under-the Geneva-convention videos made of the captured sailors. Has Turney converted to Islam? If she hasn’t, why is she wearing a head scarf? Presumably her captors insisted she wear one, but why isn’t she ripping it off her head. She’s not their willing guest and certainly owes them no respect for their religious beliefs. She’s a British sailor, for goodness sake, not an Iranian woman.

As I’ve said, I haven’t walked in Turney’s shoes, and I don’t know what coercion she’s under but, every time I see that picture of her “scarved,” I want to reach through my computer screen and reveal her blonde, British hair for all the Muslim misogynists to see and fear.

A few days ago, based on a post in Little Green Footballs, I included in my blog a video of Hillel Neuer, of UN Watch, politely blasting the UN Human Rights Council for consistently supporting the world’s most murderous regimes while equally consistently demonizing Israel, the only Democracy in the Middle East. I noted, as did LGF, that the Council President demanded to have Hillel’s speech erased from the record. Now, the ever helpful LGF has posted a video with all the speeches that effortlessly flow into the UN record. Here’s Johnson’s description of the “approved” UN rhetoric:

UN Watch has now put together another must-see video, showing the kinds of disgusting, evil speeches that are NOT banned by the UN Human Rights Council—including support for the execution of homosexuals, support for terrorist groups, Holocaust denial, and the inevitable demonization of Israel (to a frightening degree).

Anyway, check out the LGF post, watch the video, and (a) see your taxpayer dollars and work and (b) see the entity the Democrats think should dictate America’s foreign policy, as well as many of its internal policies.

Accepted wisdom is that one of the reasons the voters gave Republicans the boot was that the Republicans, although they did lower taxes and increase federal revenues, spent money like it was going out of style. The Democrats, for the first time in their political history, positioned themselves as the fiscally responsible party. Turns out leopards don’t change their spots. Currently, the Dems are poised, not only to increase our taxes dramatically, which will inevitably choke off available revenues that can in future be taxed, but to increase spending, far above whatever the Republicans were frittering away. Here’s the Captain’s take:

Many people abandoned the GOP in the midterms because of their lack of discipline in federal spending. Discretionary spending rose by over 30% during the six years that the Republicans controlled both elective branches of government. They reduced taxes and grew the economy, but the GOP never delivered on their initial promise to reduce government an rein in spending.

Based on those failures, the nation gave the Democrats the majority in both chambers of Congress. What did we get? No decrease in federal spending; the Democrats want to grow the government by 2.4% each year, which would mean adding close to $100 billion in spending each year. In order to do that, they want to increase taxes across the board, choking off economic growth and making people even more dependent on the government.

By 2011, the added tax burden on every taxpayer would be over $1100 dollars. Twenty-six million small businesses would have to pay almost $4,000 in extra taxes. More than five million Americans whose incomes are too low to pay taxes now would have to start paying in 2011, making the Democratic plan more regressive than what it seeks to replace.

Democrats and taxes, together again after twelve years in the wilderness. It sounds like a movie romance — and we’re footing the bill for the production.

Mr. Bookworm and I work quite hard. As it is, between property taxes, state taxes, federal taxes, payments to keep social security afloat (because I don’t believe I’ll see this money come back at the end of my working days), gasoline taxes, sale taxes, etc., we see more than 50% of our money vanish into the government maw. The only type of tax where I feel the money is spent reasonably well is my local property tax, and that’s precisely for the old-fashioned reason that the local government is incredibly attuned to my community’s specific needs and desires. There is also, as I can tell you from my eyewitnesses point of view, almost no waste or corruption in my little government. This is a lot closer to “no taxation without representation” than the money chewing pork barrel in D.C.

Rumor in Moscow has it that the grocery store has cans of meat. Despite the fact that it’s a very cold day, a long, long line instantly forms outside the store. After a couple of hours, a Communist official comes out of the store and announces, “Supplies are not as large as we first believed. All Jews must leave the line.” With empty bags and empty stomachs, the Jews quietly depart. Another couple of hours go by, and the same official emerges from the store, this time stating, “Supplies are even smaller than we thought. All non-Party members must leave the line.” The chilled, hungry non-party members wander off. Another two cold hours go by, and the official comes out for the last time: “Sorry, we have no supplies. Everyone must go home.” And as the Communist Party members wander off into the frigid afternoon, one can be heard murmuring to the other, “Those damn Jews! They get all the luck.”

But regarding an ideology with deadly seriousness doesn’t mean that it can’t also be laughed at. Director/co-writer Ben Lewis’s new documentary Hammer & Tickle, which was co-produced by the Moving Picture Institute, chronicles the long history of jokes about Communism, in which those who lived under Communist oppressors were — when they managed to sneak it past the authorities — able to wring some humor out of the system that surrounded them. Communism’s all-encompassing terror, the film suggests, may even have given its humor a boost. As one of the film’s subjects wryly states, “The worse the government, the better the jokes.”

The documentary recounts a number of the many, many jokes that spread, often secretly, throughout the communist citizenry during the long tenure of Soviet Communism and its various offshoots. But Hammer & Tickle isn’t merely a joke book on film. It’s a brisk, concise lesson in the grim history of Soviet Communism told through a series of joke-centered anecdotes.